


In the Break of the Light

by ishie



Series: As the Night Fades Away [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Reylo AU Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-03 01:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: The sky seemed deeper out here. Once she’d been used to it, or something like it. Jakku was hardly a metropolis, even before– Well, since long before she knew it.





	In the Break of the Light

**Author's Note:**

> for Reylo AU Week: Day 4 - Fantasy / Fairy Tale / Mythological AU
> 
> This is actually an outtake from my piece for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology (which will be out on 9/30) that is in turn a piece of this incredibly long modern-ish Reylo AU based on the Andromeda myth that I’ve been writing for the last few months (which will start posting in October!). Confusing!

The sky seemed deeper out here. Once she’d been used to it, or something like it. Jakku was hardly a metropolis, even before– Well, since long before she knew it.

Here on the island, though, Rey realized she’d forgotten how to look up into that inky expanse and hold onto yourself. At home, the lights that flooded the night and spilled along the coastline kept her grounded. Sure of exactly where she ended and began. But out here was a different story. Rey grabbed onto the grass beneath her with both hands to keep from slipping away in the darkness.

“How can you stand it?” she wanted to ask. On this pile of rocks, tethered to the mainland by a radio that worked only when the clouds were right? She would go mental in a week. Maybe a month, tops.

Instead, she slowly uncurled one hand and reached out for the leg of the chair next to her. Scooting back through the grass on her bum, toward the house, away from the edge of the cliff that was still a good twenty feet ahead of her.

Behind her, in the lowering dark, wherever he was, Ben snorted. 

“It’s a lot different at night,” Rey protested. “I keep half expecting to see Riolla cringing out of the corner of my eye.”

“Here there be dragons?” His voice had no right to go that low, not where she could hear it. 

“Okay, first of all, she probably didn’t face down a dragon. And she wasn’t even on an island.” Once Rey was in the chair, she felt a bit foolish. They were no closer to the edge now than they had been when she arrived. It was so easy to forget in the dark.

“She was on the coast, though, wasn’t she?”

“No, Riolla’s ours. The failed farms, that’s what she was supposed to fix. I don’t know what they called her on the coast. In the west I think it was Andromeda.”

“Still chained, though.”

Rey hummed instead of replying and pulled her coat tighter when the wind picked up. Behind her, Ben’s footsteps crunched on the gravel path. One of the cats meowed, a rusty half-broken thing that Ben answered with a low murmur.

“I always wanted to rescue her,” she told him, before the silence stretched too thin. “Riolla, or Andromeda, or whoever. No-one should have to be that alone, especially when someone else chose it for her.”

Rey cringed. She hadn’t meant to say that, not after the last time, when she told him about Jakku. About how she’d never wait again.

“What if she chose it for herself?” he asked. He sounded so close now she could almost feel his breath on her neck. “What if exile was her only choice?”

Like his? She hoped he couldn’t see in the dark any better than she could. Wiping her face, Rey tried for something breezy, something light enough to dissolve this chain she felt straining between them.

The island seemed to sigh around her, the stiff grasses and the heavy herbs and the wind skirling through the rocky slopes so far above them.

“That doesn’t mean she should be alone,” she told him. “There’s always another choice.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks especially to inkdot & the RFFA crew for keeping me on track and motivated. If you're interested in the stories to come, hit subscribe on the series!


End file.
